common interest in matters purely local, in details, of
metropolitan affairs, in the changing physiognomy of the monstrous city,
its superficial aspects, its complex phases.

Timidly, at first, she ventured a question now and then, and after a
while, as her reserve melted, she asked more boldly, and even offered
her own comments on men and things, so that, for the first time, he had
a glimpse of her mind at work--brief, charming surprises, momentary
views of a young girl's eager intelligence, visions of her sad and
solitary self, more guessed at than revealed in anything she said or
left unsaid.

And now they were talking together with free and unfeigned interest and
pleasure, scarcely turning for a glance at the water or sky, save when
old Uncle Dudley made insulting remarks to some slow-drifting gull or
soaring bird of prey.

All the pent-up and natural enthusiasm of years was fairly bubbling to
her lips; all the long-suppressed necessity of speech with one of her
own kind who was not of her own kin.

It seemed as though they conversed and exchanged views on every topic
which concerned heaven and earth, flashing from one subject to another
which had nothing at all to do with anything yet discussed.

Out around them the flat leagues of water turned glassy and calm as a
millpond; the ducks and geese were asleep on their stools; even old
Uncle Dudley stood sentinel, with one leg buried in the downy plumage of
his belly, but his weather eye remained brilliantly open to any stir in
the blue vault above.

[Illustration: "They ate their luncheon there together."]

They ate their luncheon there together, he serving her with hot coffee
from the vacuum bottle, she plying him with sandwiches.

And now, to her beauty was added an adorable friendliness and
confidence, free from the slightest taint of self-consciousness or the
least blemish of coquetry. Intelligent, yet modest to the verge of
shyness, eager yet reserved, warm hearted yet charmingly impersonal with
him, he realized that she was finding, with him, only the happiness of
speech with mankind in the abstract. And so she poured out to him her
heart, long stifled in the abyss of her isolation; and, gazing into his
eyes, she was gazing merely toward all that was bright and happy and
youthful and responsive, and he was its symbol, God-sent from those busy
haunts of men which already, to her, had become only memories of a
blessed vision.

And all the while the unde